Cricket: Scotland on brink of defeat in Abu Dhabi

WILLIAM DICK

SCOTLAND are facing an ignominious Intercontinental Cup defeat after Afghanistan pressed home their first-innings advantage in Abu Dhabi yesterday.

The Scots are likely to lose early today, on the third day of the scheduled four, at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium. Had it not been for the efforts of the Kyle Coetzer and some poor fielding from Afghanistan, the game would already be over.

The sides will return today with Scotland still needing six runs to avoid an innings defeat and just one wicket standing.

Hopes had been high for the new-look side, especially with the addition of several recruits from the county game. However, the Scots have been punished for a series of batting failures in alien conditions.

Resuming on 175-4, a lead of 50, Afghanistan’s batsmen showed sufficient concentration and skill to increase their advantage to 150 runs.

Scotland then lost their first five wickets for 44 runs and the next four for 14. In between there was the one act of defiance as Coetzer and his Northants colleague David Murphy added 61 for the sixth wicket.

Scotland have been comprehensively outplayed throughout the match but Coetzer deserves credit for getting his head down to defy the Afghan bowlers in an accomplished knock of 57. He faced 124 deliveries and stroked a dozen boundaries while Murphy lent solid support with 23. However, when the latter was caught off a top edge by Mirwais Ashraf to give Dawlat Zadran a third wicket, the writing was on the wall. Rob Taylor was unable to repeat his stubborn tenure of the day before, edging the excellent Izatullah Dawlatzai to keeper Mo Shahzad for just four.

Coetzer’s resistance ended when he was bowled by Dawlatzai, who took his match tally to eleven wickets when he then removed Gordon Goudie with his next delivery.

The Saltires still required 31 runs just to make their rivals bat again and Gordon Drummond was dropped twice and Safyaan Sharif once as Afghanistan’s fielding let them down.

The pair, having added 25 runs, will attempt to stall the Afghans further this morning but the truth is that the game is already lost and Scotland’s chances of reaching a second consecutive I-Cup final are now hanging by a thread.

Earlier Josh Davey had been the pick of the Scottish bowlers, claiming 4-53 while Rahmat Shah finished unbeaten on 67no – the highest score of the match.

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

The Scotsman provides news, events and sport features from the Edinburgh area. For the best up to date information relating to Edinburgh and the surrounding areas visit us at The Scotsman regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website The Scotsman requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.